Posts by happygeek

I think it highlights the danger of open interactivity with customers via forum support, when anyone with a 'staff' badge can participate without customer facing training.

Let's face it, us geeks and nerds are not, on the whole, that comfortable dealing with people - it is why we chose to talk to machines after all.

There is much to be said for the access-to-all-by-all approach, don't get me wrong, but it can misfire when a loose cannon goes off like this chap did.

A member of Skype staff posting in the Linux support forum there seems to have taken a course in customer relations from <insert your least favourite company here> if his responses to criticism of the lack of real world development of the Linux version of Skype, compared to Windows development, are anything to go by.

It all started when a fed-up Linux user posted a comment suggesting “sadly, today Skype for Linux finds itself behind the eight ball, still working on problems of reliability and functionality with basic hardware that has been around for years. Its playing catch up with consumer demands from 3 years ago while simultaneously trying to "pretend" that its developing next year's cutting edge requirements” which might be a little harsh, but I’m sure will have many nodding theirs heads sympathetically.

The immediate response from staff member ‘berkus’ (if ever there was an apt username) was a sarcastic “you must be one of those Skype managers… But the reality is, you are not. And your statements are very far from The Real Truth.”

Another user chirps in with an accusation that Skype treats its Linux-users like unloved stepchildren compared to Windows users, and warns that offending us with ignorance and arrogance will only make people give up on Skype.

Now you might think that this would bring out the customer relation side in Skype staff, eager to assure its users, its customers, its paying customers that Skype take Linux seriously and care …

That's true, but I think the bra and boxers idea is a little too left-field. I mean, I quite like to play the odd video game with my father-in-law and I am not sure which of us would look best in a bra.

Who would have thought, before the Nintendo Wii came along, that the idea of controlling a video game by waving a lump of plastic around in the air like a deranged loon would gain such mass appeal so quickly? Which is why I am not writing off the latest thinking in video game control that could be heading for the Wii, interactive underwear.

Jennifer Chowdhury has been demonstrating her innovative idea of building game controllers into knickers, boxer shorts and even bars to pretty much anyone who will listen without falling to the floor in a fit of laughter. She says that the goal of her project, part of her thesis that started life as an exercise for networked objects, is to create objects that “challenge the traditional notions and orientation of video game play” and it has to be said she has achieved that OK.

After all, you will have to be really careful about who you invite over for a gaming session when that game is controlled by players physically touching each other in the underwear department. Even the invitation itself is probably best made to real close friends only, as you might feel uncomfortable asking strangers for a game of Pong in their panties.

I guess Pong was chosen because control is about as simple as you can get, and Jennifer admits that mapping the game controls to the first device, a bra, was simple enough: “touching …

Even the smartest employee is unlikely to have a head that can remember all the contact details and personal notes relating to 5000 customers and potential customers.

Even the dumbest USB memory stick can.

Check Point Software Technologies, developers of the ZoneAlarm security range, has announced the results of research which suggest that half of all staff will happily walk away from employment with competitive information about your business in their pockets. That they are walking straight into another job with it should be cause for concern to any employer worth his or her salt.

85% of employees questioned said that they could easily download useful information and data and take it with them when they moved job. This despite the fact that 75% of the companies they worked for having a competitive intelligence policy for departing staff. Perhaps the small matter of 75% of them not having a matching security policy to prevent data walking out of the door has something to do with the discrepancy?

At the heart of the problem would appear to be the fall in price and rise in capacity of USB memory sticks. The survey found that 33% of people store work data on a USB stick compared with just 14% using the company laptop. That’s 14% using the often highly secured company laptop compared to 33% using an USB stick that the company don’t even know exists let alone has applied any security thought to.

Of course, a USB stick is not only cheap and easy to carry, it’s also easy to lose. And if you take the top end of the market, a 16Gb capacity stick, that’s the equivalent …

I've been putting it under a quick bit of testing pressure as I may be reviewing it for PC Pro magazine shortly, and have to say first impressions are good. Certainly there is a decent turn of speed when it comes to page rendering compared to IE7, although the gains are negligable with Firefox in my limited experience with Safari 3 for Windows so far.

Privacy International has accused Google of embarking upon a smear campaign within the media to discredit both PI and a report, to be published in full later in the year, which ranks the privacy performance of the top Internet service companies. The interim results which were published on the 9th Jun, places Google at the bottom of the privacy ranking league.

Google is slated for many reasons relating to privacy, including some worrying ones such as personal user information being retained for an indefinite period of time but without the use having an option to delete it, and the recording of search strings and IP addresses of its users with no clear policy regarding when that data is deleted, thought to be between 18 and 24 months.

PI obviously knew that a Google storm was going to break as a result of this, because it states within that interim report “we are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations. While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy.”

But perhaps it was not expecting to receive information from two European journalists who, independently of each other, revealed that Google representatives had contacted them with …

There is a more technically detailed description of this threat posted in the Websense blog, for anyone who wants to know a little more about it.

Of course there is always the question of whether the Olympics actually needs branding, beyond an event specific logo/identity that is?

I liked it when Lord Seb Coe went on the news to deflect criticism by saying it was meant to be viewed as a dynamic moving image not a static one (which is a tad difficult in print, on posters, on the badge they have had made etc) and that it would grow on people over time.

Just like an infectious fungal disease, and about as attractive.

I cannot see even Seb Coe being able to run fast enough to escape the fallout from this one...

Unless you happen to have been one of the people who authorized payment of around $800,000 for the design, or were on the receiving end of it, then the chances are you will agree with the momentum of public opinion that the London 2012 Olympics branding sucks. In fact, it more than just plain simple sucks, it sucks elephants through a straw is how bad it is. But as well as being offensive to the eye, this campaign has shown how technology can attack both your product credibility and the health of those viewing it.

The credibility thing is commonplace. The London 2012 Olympic Committee is hardly the first to waste good money in a desperate attempt to appear trendy, or as a spokesman claimed “dynamic, modern and flexible” and able to work with “new technology and across traditional and new media networks.” Already the more astute readers will be thinking Emperor’s New Clothes, and I suspect that you are right in reaching that conclusion.

But that is just the half of it. What really concerns me, considering the amount of money spent developing this branding and the campaign launch to publicize the London Olympics, is that fundamental basics have been overlooked. Basics that are there for good reason, to protect the public from over-enthusiastic techno-nerds.

You see, a series of TV adverts were produced to introduce us all to the new logo and the Olympics branding, and these were broadcast …

Thanks, well spotted and now corrected.

Turns out you cannot link directly to the report file but have to go in through the main AV Comparatives home page and navigate to it from there. Most annoying.

I have removed the dead PDF link from the posting, thatnks for the heads up!

Independent Austrian antivirus testing outfit AV Comparatives has a reputation for going the extra mile when putting products through their paces. Something that Microsoft discovered to its cost earlier in the year when, rather embarrassingly, its flagship OneCare antivirus product managed to finish last and fail to get a highly sought after AV Comparatives certification of any sort.

Things have improved for the Seattle giants since then, and in the latest round of tests for which the results have just been published, OneCare no longer languishes at the bottom of the heap. Microsoft has only moved up 3 places into 14th position, but it beat some rather well thought of names in the AV industry in so doing. In 15th place came Kaspersky Labs AV v6.02, just above Microworld eScan Antivirus 8 (which I have to admit to have never heard of before now) and the newly crowned worst antivirus product is Grisoft AVG AntiMalware v7.5 which managed to detect only 8% of new samples, returned ‘many’ false positives while registering slow for its on-demand scanning speed. A very poor result which saw it fail to get certificated, unlike Microsoft OneCare which can now claim to have reached a standard level by detecting just 18% of the 20522 new threats thrown at it. Not really that great, though, is it?

Certainly not when compared to the likes of standard certificated AVIRA AntiVir PE Premium 7 which racked up an impressive 71% detection …

Agreed 101%, but stopping them is obviously a lot harder than we might imagine otherwise I suspect they would have been stopped by now.

To most people who do not actually play it, World of Warcraft is just a game. Anyone who has devoted any time at all within an immersive online world such as this will gladly put you straight on that. World of Warcraft is not just a game, it is a way of life, a virtual life that for many becomes very real indeed. Which is why they get somewhat narked by those people who don’t play the game, figuratively speaking.

Take Peons4Hire, for example, an outfit that sells gold to other players so they can advance in the game by spending real money rather than real time gaining experience and reputation. In-game gold is a hugely valuable commodity, but there seems to be no great desire on behalf of Blizzard Entertainment, which runs World of Warcraft, to close down such organizations. Perhaps because the legal arguments, and the legal bills, would be extensive and the outcome uncertain. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the act of selling in-game assets is not actually a crime after all.

That said, a class action suit has been filed by players of the game against one gold farming company called IGE. The suit claims that it made a "calculated decision to reap substantial profits by knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment associated with consumer agreements between Blizzard Entertainment and subscribers to its virtual world called World of Warcraft."
Meanwhile, Blizzard has declared …

Thursday 31st May is the first ever Google Developer Day, with more than 5000 developers at 10 locations around the world taking part. Keynotes and breakout sessions will be taking place in Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Madrid, Paris, Hamburg, London, and Mountain View, California. Both Google engineers and product managers will be on hand to discuss the future of web applications with developers from right around the globe.

The idea being that Google can articulate its strategy for working with the developer community while reinforcing its commitment to drive open standards for developers both inside and outside Google in order to create web applications quickly.

"One of the things we find most exciting about emerging web technologies is the ability to mash up many different pieces of technology to build new applications, create businesses, or even just satisfy that niche interest or convenience," Jeff Huber, vice president of engineering at Google told me. "We want to work closely with developers so together we can define the next generation of products available to users on the web."

During Developer Day, Google will share details and demos of a new open source technology for creating offline web applications. The new browser extension, named Google Gears, is being made available in its early stages to the developer community so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. The long-term hope is that Google Gears can help the industry as a whole move toward …

The PlayStation 3 is, without doubt, a multi-talented piece of kit: state of the art games console, Blu-Ray player, media centre and more. Much more, in fact, because from the 1st June you will be able to add Linux Enterprise Server to the functionality list.

That is the date from which you will be able to download an installer from www.jpy.com which will bring HELIOS’ optimized Yellow Dog Linux v5.0, utilizing the IBM 64-bit 3.2 GHz Cell processor in the PS3, and in turn will run HELIO UB, the enterprise client server.

Certainly as far as I am aware, this will be the first instance of the PS3 being used for a business server solution. OK, so the whole point of this little exercise is to enable the HELIOS sales team to show off its software to potential customers. But that doesn’t lessen the impact of being able to run the demonstration, complete with bundled software worth thousands (albeit on a 4 hour time limit per session) on a machine costing so little when compared to your average Apple Xserves or IBM Blade Server,

The Linux installer is customised to make the best use of the limited memory available on the PS3. The disk image installs Yellow Dog Linux in under 10 minutes, with a configuration designed to optimise performance offering 40% more memory than the standard config. The PS3 uses a 64-bit Cell processor that runs at 3.2 GHz, is PowerPC compatible with 256 …

The stupid users category. ;)

The real difference being that DaniWeb does NOT alter the context of the posting, it alters the formatting by adding the advertising links to certain keywords. The underlying message is not changed, there is no confusion over what the author has written. Forget about the whole 'I didn't endorse the advertising link' argument, that is spurious in this case.

What the ISP did in this case and what this posting is about, is change the context of the message as written by the author by adding a whole new block of text to it.

That is why is it an unnaceptable invasion of privacy, and that is why it is wrong.

In fairness, I was well aware that advertising would be inserted in this posting and so it is not the same issue at all. Your final comment is, if I may say so, somewhat disingenuous.

My point is that we have an expectation of privacy when it comes to our personal email, and certainly do not expect that expectation to be shattered by the ISP in this way.

Let me get one thing straight before I go any further. I am a caring father of four, the youngest of which is just 7 years old. If any of them were abducted, I would do everything in my power to find them. Just like any caring father.

Certainly the search for missing Madeleine McCann has been spearheaded by just such a caring parental unit, and my heart goes out to them.

However, while the use of the Internet has been a core component in keeping the publicity going and ensuring that as many people as possible are aware that a little girl is missing, one does have to ask when does care and concern cross the line and become an intrusion of privacy.

I am not talking about the despicable websites which have spawned all over the place using misspellings and similar sounding domains in order to put up a picture of the little girl and then flood the rest of the page with money earning advertising. Any such an attempt to cash in on the heartache of the McCann family in this way, carving off a bit of the hundreds of millions of hits that the official Find Madeleine site has received, is deserving of a beating with a big stick.

But what about when an ISP uses your personal email messages to further that search, without actually asking you first?

That’s exactly what one concerned chap in the UK asked …

Good luck with the exams. The one advantage of being an old dude is that my exam days are long, long past me :)

Doesn't help with the cost of the HD 2600 XT Ultimate Editon card though. Perhaps Bill can help if he has contacts at Sapphire willing to share the details with us?

I would expect there to be one, yes :)

Tripods are not an option when you are are sitting at some press conference, squeezed in amongst a bunch of other journos half a mile back in the hall.

Keeping the camera steady is not so easy when you are forced to use a humungous zoom to get the head and shoulders shot your editor requires, from that half a mile back in the hall.

Which is why I find the anti-shake technology so valuable. I can pretty much point, zoom and shoot with the camera over my head and using the LCD twist and turn viewfinder rotated around to give me some idea of what I am getting, safe in the knowledge that the images will all be sharp and clean.

I am no pro photographer, not by a long shot, but becuase my work is for publication more often than not I am happy to let the technology sweat on my behalf. :)

The anti-shake technology used in the Panasonic Lumix cameras is certainly something I'd not like to live without...

Yep, I guess there is some value in having the depth of field available to allow for some post-processing creative tweaking as it were. I admit I had not given much thought to the prospect of being able to change the focal point in this way, not being a creative photographer just a point and shoot and do the business one ;)

I couldn’t help spotting a story over the weekend relating to what was being called a groundbreaking camera that can refocus blurry images after the photo has actually been taken. The development, from the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, uses a lens with a depth of field around ten times the norm, which means it can keep subjects in focus over a much greater distance. Post-photo processing can be used within the camera itself, or via software on the computer, to drag an out of focus image back into focus.

This works by using something called a masked aperture, which means there is a transparent slide between the lens and the camera, imprinted with a crossword like pattern. By changing the flow of light the depth of field is considerably increased and allows refocusing after the original image is captured. You can view a slideshow presentation of the technology, demonstrating how it works and providing some before and after examples, here.

What this will not do is explain why it is such a breakthrough. The heterodyne light field camera, a name which might have to change when it comes to market, is being hailed as the Holy Grail of photography by the senior research scientist on the project, Dr Ramesh Raskar. Another member of the team, Dr Amit Agrawal, reckons it means that “people don't have to worry about focusing." Yet this isn’t the first time I have come across such technology, a team at …

...I wanna own Norton...or McAfee... ;)

Possibly, although my experience suggests that you really shouldn't underestimate the capacity for stupidity when it comes to the clicking of anything online, even an advert for a nice free infection.

IT security professional Didier Stevens has been conducting an experiment into computer user stupidity by running a Google Adwords campaign which offers to infect your PC for free. The advert actually read:

Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!

Which should be enough to stop all but the terminally dumb from clicking upon it, yet hundreds of people did just that during the six months of this remarkable experiment into sadly predictable user behavior. The user agent string which identifies the site visitor to the server, and includes browser application information, shows that an amazing 98 percent of those stupid folk were running Windows. Now OK, I know that Windows is the dominant OS, and OK I know that there are more newbies running Windows as well, but even so that is something of an eye-opener is it not? Are Linux and Mac users just more wary, more educated in security issues or less gullible?

Whatever, the one thing that the experiment proves beyond nay reasonable doubt is that there are idiots out there who are so click happy that even the direct threat of infection is not enough to prevent them from doing so. No wonder, then, that the botnet problem remains so great, that spam continues to grow in volume, that Microsoft can get away with selling an entire OS on the basis of it being more secure than the last one which we never really got around to patching …

And in a further update, I am now also helping with an official investigation into the matter that has been ordered by the UK Foreign Secretary, who will report to Parliament once the independent investigation is complete.

The Information Commissioner in the UK has today been in touch to confirm that an official investigation of how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office handled both the security aspect of the visa outsourcing in this case and the discovery of the breach (or more accurately the delay between being first informed and then taking action a year later) is now underway and that I may be asked to provide evidence during the course of that investigation.

Interesting. PM me if you want to divulge more...

The UK government visa information website, UKvisas, has now issued a statement as follows:

"VFS ONLINE APPLICATIONS IN INDIA, RUSSIA AND NIGERIA

VFS Global Ltd provides an on-line application system for UK visa applicants in India, Russia and Nigeria. Due to a technical problem the VFS on-line application system is currently unavailable.

Customers applying for visas in these countries should contact their nearest visa application centre for further information."

Of course, they don't mention that the technical problem is actually the fear that the systems might still be insecure in some way.

The UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Lord Triesman, is more forthcoming. Quoted in a report about the scandal at The Register he states "The VFS online facility will not be resumed until VFS and UKvisas can be assured that it is absolutely secure."

This posting became the basis of the main news story on Channel 4 News in the UK last night, and the streaming video of that broadcast can be viewed at the Channel 4 website here.

Not only have we (Sanjib, DaniWeb, Channel 4 and myself) succeeded in getting the breach secured, but online visa applications to a number of countries have now been suspended by VFS Global while further investigations are made.

It also looks very likely that questions will be asked in the UK Parliament, questions that will demand answers at the very highest government level as to how this could have been allowed to happen in the first place and then go unsecured for a whole year after first being reported.

A job well done methinks, and I am feeling rather chuffed with myself as a result :)

I like to think I 'did the right thing' by not running the story until after VFS Global had been given a chance to close the hole. I could have easily gone public yesterday and probably got a much bigger story out of it, but that would not have been fair on the thousands of people whose data would have been at even greater risk.

I guess this means I do have some ethical responsibility somewhere in my journalist bones :)

Sanjib Mitra is a man who likes to be responsible and do the right thing. A year ago he discovered, quite by accident, that a little bit of URL tweaking could reveal personal data about people other than himself within a website database. He was completing a complicated application form himself when he was faced with a blank page and a browser back button that did nothing, so he tried changing numerical data at the end of the URL in an effort to salvage some of the information he had spent the previous hour entering. His reward was not time saved and the application retrieved, but rather the applications of pretty much anyone who had ever used the system at any time in the past, and all it took was a different number to be substituted in the URL.

Now this is nothing unusual, poorly designed sites make this kind of security gaff all the time. Of course when it is a commercial site and it is customer data we are talking about then things take on a rather different perspective than the local bowling club membership database being exposed. Unfortunately, the website that Sanjib was logged on to at the time was VFS India, the British High Commission’s commercial partner in India to which it outsources the operation of visa application centers on behalf of the four visa departments in India. Indian citizens wishing to travel to the UK and requiring visas use this service to …

A Robbie fan huh? :)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said that the open source movement needs to “play by the same rules” as the rest of the business and claims “what’s fair is fair.” Which is pretty rich given the high profile cases involving dodgy business practice and Microsoft during the last few years. Still, a leading Microsoft lawyer, Brad Smith, has nonetheless accused the Linux of a serious swathe of patent violations, some 235 in total in fact. As part of an interview with Fortune magazine, Smith cites some 42 violations of Microsoft patents involving the Linux kernel, 45 more by OpenOffice.org, 65 to do with the UI and other Linux design elements, and throws in a nonchalant 83 bonus violations involving other open source applications.

If this is the case, then why has Microsoft not filed against those concerned in order to protect its IP and add a few million in damages to its bottom line? After all, the IT business is not exactly know as being shy when it comes to filing for patent infringement, and Microsoft isn’t what one could call backwards in coming forwards regarding litigation to protect itself.

Could it have something to do with taking a big stick and little carrot approach to lucrative commercial deals, such as we have seen recently with the Novell ‘we won’t sue you if you jump into bed with us’ pact? Or perhaps it is more a case of running scared from the big stick that the …

Your username suits you :)

And your solution is?

For the average user spam has always been an annoyance. For the average spammer it has always been about making money. For the criminal gangs that have muscled in on this lucrative industry during the last few years it is now about territory and control. Control, that is, of the botnets behind the malware distribution networks that they rent out to the spamming middle men to enable them to ply their trade in relative safety from the crippled arm of the law.

Leading AV researchers at Kaspersky have now identified three criminal gangs which are participating in an increasingly desperate battle of the botnets. This turf war is, as all turf wars have a habit of doing, turning nasty and it is the average computer who is getting caught in the crossfire. No longer are the gangs happy to settle for a slice of the spam pie, they want it all. And that means control over as many compromised third party computers to create the biggest of mega zombie botnets. To accomplish this, the gangs behind the Bagle, Warezov and Zhelatin worms are turning their attention to ridding those compromised computers of rival gang malware infections in order to install their own and gain that control.

Spammers pay a lot of money to rent time on these mega botnets, and the bigger the botnet, the bigger its capacity to distribute spam, the more valuable a commodity it becomes.

Kaspersky Lab senior virus analyst Alexander Gostev writing in …

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced the world’s highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive and it will feature in Dell and Alienware systems. The 2.5”, 200Gb, 7200rpm, Travelstar 7K200 brings twice the capacity of its predecessor as well as a 22 percent performance hike. Using Hitachi’s third-generation perpendicular magnetic recording technology, the 7K200 also comes with optional hard drive level bulk data encryption to guard against data loss.

Rather than protecting your data on a hard drive using software-based encryption or a system-level password, this scrambles the data using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Encryption at the hard-drive level represents a more sophisticated approach to securing users’ data and is generally considered to be as impenetrable as you are likely to get right now. Just as importantly you get a secure data erasing process into the bargain because bulk data encryption makes data-erasing unnecessary. How so? Because by simply deleting the encryption key the drive is rendered unreadable and the data safe from prying eyes.

Hitachi tells me that the drive is 18-33 percent faster in application performance than competitive 7200 RPM and 5400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drives, which means faster file copying and document retrieval, better graphics, faster game performance. It has low acoustics to offer a richer audio-listening experience, and a 5400 RPM power parity means users don’t have to give up battery life for the higher performance. 350 Gs …

Both Second Life and Skype have come in for some bad publicity following media reports exposing pedophile activity on the hugely popular services. Second Life got a kicking from a German TV program called Report Mainz which claimed to have been approached by pedophiles inviting the reporter to attend ‘child pornography meetings’ within the very virtual environment.

Although this might sound like a storm in an avatars teacup, the reporter attended such a virtual meeting and was contacted by dealers in very real child pornography as a result. Second Life is, of course, cooperating with the German authorities in tracking down the culprits and has also introduced a system of age verification for its members. Those who opt not to comply with the age verification process will not, however, be excluded from the mature rated regions of the Second Life environment where pornography is rife, but rather just not have access where the creators have tagged content as being adult in nature. A subtle but important difference. Certainly it’s a good move, but not one that will have any effect on the predatory pedophile using the virtual world for a frighteningly real and evil purpose.

The second media sting came courtesy of the Sunday Times newspaper during a two week investigation of Skype, which it claims has become the preferred method for many pedophiles to locate and groom their young victims. Reporters posing as children between the ages of 10 and 14 were exposed to a bombardment of …

Look, I don't know where you get the idea from that I am a Linux fanboy. I have some Linux distributions running here to keep up to speed with things, but I am a Windows fanboy if truth be told.

As for the this turning into a urination contest, if that is the way you want to view it, then fine. However, when someone who disagrees with my opinion states straight off the bat that my posting is propaganda, questions my professional ability as a journalist and assumes that I am a Linux apologist, then I am going to argue my corner.

There is no point in continuing with this, though, seeing as you have painted yourself into a corner and are not prepared to actually enter into an adult debate. "Your headline and content indicated Microsoft was more at fault" being a prime example. My headline did nothing of the sort, it suggested Microsoft was at fault, not more, not less, just at fault, and my posting went on to explain why I believed this.

Readers might like to note that I am not the one who is making the personal remarks. To come in where you started, my grandmother used to say to me that someone with no substance in an argument will turn to personal abuse and is best ignored...

Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting that Vista is the only culprit. Merely that Vista, or rather the Aero UI, is causing laptops to consume more power than they need to be with no real benefit to the user. As a result, Vista is therefore contributing more to problems with the environment through excess power consumption when compared to XP.

I could have written 'laptop power consumption contributing to global warming problem' or indeed 'old fridges continue to damage the environment' but chose not to as neither are relevant to this blog posting which is about Vista.

The quality of my journalism is, obviously, very poor indeed. I suspect I will have to find another job as I doubt I will last long in this career. Unless you count 16 years as a successful, award winning, freelance technology journalist as any indicator of longevity. Nope, I must just have been very lucky not to get found out until now. I am off to submit my resignation to the National Union of Journalists and Society of Authors forthwith, and to tell the Science Museum here in the UK to cancel the contract for that new book they have just asked me to write for them... ;)

Also, note, that I am not advocating getting rid of Vista at all in my blog - but rather simply switching off the Aero UI for laptop usage to realise a double whammy benefit of longer battery life, better performance and less environmental impact.

Am I really such an evil blogger for suggesting this?